ound up in his stars, even
then, and was already beginning to be famous, because of a comet he'd
discovered. He was a professor in our college here, where his father
had been president. His father had just died a few months before, and
Nurse said maybe that was one reason why Father got caught in the
matrimonial net like that. (Those are _her_ words, not mine. The
idea of calling my mother a net! But Nurse never did half appreciate
Mother.) But Father just worshipped his father, and they were always
together--Grandma being sick so much; and so when he died my father
was nearly beside himself, and that's one reason they were so anxious
he should go to that meeting in Boston. They thought it might take his
mind off himself, Nurse said. But they never thought of its putting
his mind on a wife!

So far as his doing it right up quick like that was concerned, Nurse
said that wasn't so surprising. For all the way up, if Father wanted
anything he insisted on having it, and having it right away then. He
never wanted to wait a minute. So when he found a girl he wanted, he
wanted her right then, without waiting a minute. He'd never happened
to notice a girl he wanted before, you see. But he'd found one now,
all right; and Nurse said there was nothing to do but to make the best
of it, and get ready for her.

There wasn't anybody to go to the wedding. Grandma Anderson was sick,
so of course she couldn't go, and Grandpa was dead, so of course he
couldn't go, and there weren't any brothers or sisters, only Aunt Jane
in St. Paul, and she was so mad she wouldn't come on. So there was no
chance of seeing the bride till Father brought her home.

Nurse said they wondered and wondered what kind of a woman it could be
that had captured him. (I told her I wished she _wouldn't_ speak of
my mother as if she was some kind of a hunter out after game; but
she only chuckled and said that's about what it amounted to in some
cases.) The very idea!

The whole town was excited over the affair, and Nurse Sarah heard a
lot of their talk. Some thought she was an astronomer like him. Some
thought she was very rich, and maybe famous. Everybody declared she
must know a lot, anyway, and be wonderfully wise and intellectual; and
they said she was probably tall and wore glasses, and would be thirty
years old, at least. But nobody guessed anywhere near what she really
was.

Nurse Sarah said she should never forget the night she came, and how
she looked, a